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Bloody Hell: What Do Religions Think of Menstruation?

Let’s try and understand how menstruation is viewed by different religions.

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Much of religious politics today revolves around whether menstruation causes defilement of sacred sites, or not.

Periods – or periodic haemorrhage in women – used to have a cataclysmic influence on a woman’s day-to-day routine, but as society evolved, the effect of this monthly adversity on her daily life became lesser and lesser.

Today, the big question that has emerged is whether menstruating women entering religious institutions affect their towering standards of “purity”. But before trying to answer it, let’s try and understand how menstruation is viewed by different religions.

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Christianity

 Let’s try and understand how menstruation is viewed by different religions.
(Photo: Reuters)

Chapter 15 of the Book of Leviticus says that a menstruating woman will remain “in a state of menstrual pollution for seven days”, and that if anyone touches her, he too will be unclean until the evening.

Though women can enter the church during their periods, conservative members of the Orthodox Church don’t allow them to receive Holy Communion. But as this book goes on to suggest, the evolution theory that began in twentieth century Europe had great impact on religious discourse. During the time, people started drifting away from the idea of impurity as one involving bodily fluids and graduated to one that had moral implications.

Islam

 Let’s try and understand how menstruation is viewed by different religions.
The name of Prophet Muhammad on the wall of a Mosque. (Image treated by The Quint)

The only verse of the Quran which makes a clear mention of the word, “menstruation” asks men to practice abstinence with their wives when they are on their periods, according to Vice. This, it says, is because menstruation brings “pain and trouble” to the woman, and not because it is impure. The article also suggests that a menstruating woman cannot complete the pilgrimage to Mecca either.

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Hinduism

 Let’s try and understand how menstruation is viewed by different religions.
(Image has been treated by The Quint)

Hinduism views the menstruating woman as impure, although her impurity ends at the same time as her periods, according to the article, Menstrual taboos among major religions.

But during that time, a woman has to sit separately and eat in different utensils, as the article goes on to suggest. She is also not to cook food, or do any household chores. She is also barred from entering the pooja room or visiting the temple.

In fact, in earlier times, women were made to leave their main house and retire temporarily in a small hut.

But in some Hindu communities, the first period is a time of celebration when the girl is finally said to have come of age. She’s made to have a milk bath, is wrapped in an ornate sari and made-up like a bride.

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Judaism

 Let’s try and understand how menstruation is viewed by different religions.
Still from Fill the Void. (Photo Courtesy: Reshet Broadcasting)

Menstruation is termed as niddah in Judaism, with elaborate instructions on what a woman is permitted or not permitted to do during her menses.

Touching a menstruating woman renders a person impure until sunset. Jewish law also forbids physical relations between a man and woman during her periods and for a week thereafter. Even passing objects, sharing the same bed, smelling her perfume, looking at her clothing, or hearing her sing is not allowed.

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Buddhism

 Let’s try and understand how menstruation is viewed by different religions.
(Photo has been treated by The Quint)

According to a book by Chanju Mun, who teaches Buddhist studies at the University of Hawaii, Buddhism views menstruation as normal and if Buddhist nuns happen to stain their robes, they are asked to just wash them normally, which is enough to make them pure once again.

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Sikhism

 Let’s try and understand how menstruation is viewed by different religions.
(Photo has been treated by The Quint)

The Guru Granth “dramatically dispels” all the taboos around menstruation, writes Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh in The Oxford Handbook of Sikh Studies. In fact, she also points that the first Guru reprimanded those who labelled the cloth stained with menstrual blood as “polluted”. Sikhism’s view of menstruation could perhaps be gauged from the fact that while celebrating human life that emerges from the mother’s blood and the father’s semen, more importance is given to the maa ka rakhtu.

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As you saw, religions have multiple interpretations of menstruation. But the negative beliefs associated with the phenomena are now being questioned vigorously.

(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)

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